The Mariinsky Ring in Cardiff - Die Walküre: Soloists and Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre, Valery Gergiev (conductor) Wales Millennium Centre 01.12.2006 (GPu)

 

Production

Production Concept: Valery Gergiev and George Tsypin

Staged by: Susanna Tsiriouk

Set Design: George Tsypin

Costumes: Tatiana Noginova
Lighting: Gleb Filshtinsky
Video Projection: Greg Emetaz

Assistant Stage Director: Irina Kosheleva

Cast

 

Siegmund: Oleg Balashov

Hunding: Gennady Bezzubenkov

Wotan: Mikhail Kit

Sieglinde: Mlada Khudoley

Brünnhilde: Olga Savova

Fricka: Larissa Diadkova

Gerhilde: Lia Shevtsova

Ortlinde: Irina Vasilieva

Waltraute: Elena Vitman

Schwertleite: Lyudmila Lanunnikova

Helmwige: Tatiana Kravtsova

Siegrune: Nadezhda Vasilieva

Grimgerde: Elena Sommer

Rossweisse: Lyubov Sokolova

 

I didn’t see the first night of this striking Ring Cycle. Bill Kenny did, and his review, with its reservations and qualified praise, tallies with much that I heard from others who saw the performance. Indeed, some of those I spoke to were less tolerant in their judgements than MusicWeb’s reviewer was. But every single one of them was in agreement that Die Walküre was a big improvement on Das Rheingold. Certainly there was much to admire in this first ‘full’ night of the Mariinsky’s Ring in Cardiff.

 

 

A.E. Housman’s test of real poetry was that it provoked certain physical responses; it made the skin bristle or sent a shiver down the spine; or it caused “a constriction of the throat and a precipitation of water to the eyes”. Applying that test here, such symptoms were in evidence right from the very beginning, with the extraordinary beauty of the orchestra’s low strings. For the rest of the evening much of the orchestral work was of a similar quality. I agree with Bill Kenny that there is a “noticeable Mariinsky (or Gergiev) sound” to the playing, but this ‘Russian’ sound didn’t feel inappropriate in a production which offered a reading of the opera that wanted to go beyond the purely Teutonic, with its emphasis on a vision of the work which, in the words of the designer George Tsypin, “looks towards Asia, towards the Russian steppes”.

 

There was much else that passed the Housman test too. There was Larissa Diadkova’s Fricka, an extraordinarily powerful presence, both dramatically and vocally; there was a skin-bristling frisson throughout the Scene II confrontation between her and Mikhail Kit’s Wotan, a confrontation both resonantly epic and plausibly ‘domestic’. The Brünnhilde of Olga Savova was occasionally swamped by the weight of orchestral sound, but at other times was thrillingly bell-like. In Scene II Sieglinde’s distress was harrowingly articulated by Mlada Khudoley, and the whole relationship between Sieglinde and Siegmund (Oleg Balashov) was touchingly done, growing convincingly from tentative beginnings, both musically and dramatically. Mikhail Kit’s Wotan was movingly vulnerable, vocally best when at his most confiding and intimate, persuasively central to Wagner’s exploration of the paradoxes of love and power. Musically the Walkyrie were impressive – mine obviously wasn’t the only spine to feel the shiver or whose throat was constricted – and Wotan’s farewell to Brünnhilde surely brought “a precipitation of water” to more eyes than just mine.

 

 

This, as Bill Kenny’s review of Das Rheingold makes clear, is essentially a production without a thesis, a production which doesn’t seem to have a ‘point’ it wants to make insistently. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; we have all, surely, seen too many operatic productions in which dogmatic theses were hammered home repetitively, often at the cost of all real respect for the original, which was effectively ‘improved’ rather than produced. Here, rather, there is a non-dogmatic openness, a willingness to let character and music make their own impact, above all a willingness (and ability) to tell the story with obvious conviction. This lack of a thesis does perhaps rob the production of an absolute tightness and uniformity of purpose, but I am not sure that the gains don’t outweigh the losses.

 

The four huge, looming figures which, in various configurations, dominate the stage give proceedings a sense of primeval power. They seemed like neglected idols of a half-forgotten cult, or a reminder of gods more ancient than Wotan and his family. Their presence worked to suggest that other gods had come and gone before, that gods are not ‘eternal’, that a ‘cycle’ (or cycles?) such as the one these operas enact had happened at least once before. These huge maimed bodies spoke of the vulnerability of the human (and divine) figures whose ‘grand’ actions were placed and judged by the presence of these silent watchers and listeners. Was it only my fancy that saw in the large rock (presumably) with which they shared the stage, something which in certain lights (and the lighting and costumes were marvellous throughout) looks  like a human cerebellum? The resemblance was just enough to suggest – without dogmatic thesis making – a kind of less systematic Jungian reading of Wagner’s work of the sort familiar from Robert Donnington’s book on The Ring.

So, there was much to admire and enjoy. But there were also frustrating aspects. The sheer bulk of the central features of the stage, occupying so much of the territory of even a large stage such as that at the Millennium Centre, tended to force the singers into lines across the front of the stage; at times it was almost like watching a costumed concert performance against an extraordinary backdrop. This, perhaps, where the production missed the influence of a top-class director of rich theatrical experience – it is noticeable that no ‘director’, as such, is named in the credits of the production. There were episodes when not quite enough thought seemed to have been given to the spatial dispositions and relationships of the characters on stage.

 

To judge by the very highest theatrical standards, it might be said that not all the elements in the production were fully integrated into an utterly coherent whole, so that the effect was, as it were, additive rather than absolutely organic. But for all such reservations, this was a powerful evening’s opera.

 

Glyn Pursglove

 

 

All pictures : © George Tsypin or Natasha Razina